Volatility continues to pick up. We're seeing bigger prices swings for stocks, in BOTH directions.

But of all the things I'm seeing out there, this former darling, and market bellwether absolutely has my attention.

On Thursday, Apple went out a yet another new low relative to the rest of the market. Here's what Apple looks like vs QQQ:

This is a completed top and potentially disastrous break.

The next chart below is what Apple looks like vs the S&P500 and the absolute price laid over it.

$AAPL stock has been falling all year, despite what some of the indexes have done during this period.

It's not just the declining new highs list that we've seen the past 2 months, the next question is do we see an expansion in new lows?

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to our latest project, it couldn't be any simpler!

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

The bottom line is it is a bull market. We want as many vehicles and options...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by David Goeddel, director of Tenaya Therapeutics Inc $TNYA.

Goeddel reported a purchase of 2,222,222 TNYA shares, equivalent to $10 million.

One of the things we've been monitoring closely over the past month is the new lows list.

I see very often how people love to just subtract random numbers from each other, mostly for the sake of subtracting.

There's really no reason for it.

For example, lately I'm sure you've noticed some traders and analysts taking the new 52-week high list and then arbitrarily subtracting the number of new 52-week lows from it.

lol for what?

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.

It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point...

This is the video recording of the February 14, 2024, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by JANA Partners Management LP.

The investment firm reported a purchase of $37 million  in Mercury Systems $MRCY.

The only real safe haven out there continues to be the US Dollar.

That's it.

When money flows into the Dollar, stocks are under pressure. You may not always see it at the index level, but you can certainly see it when you count and go one by one across the stock market.

The US Dollar bottomed on December 27th. That was also the day that the Advance-Decline line on the NYSE put in its top. It was also the day that the Russell2000 Small-cap Index peaked.

Here's the Dollar now making new 3-month highs:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a 13D filing by Carl Icahn.

Icahn revealed an initial stake in JetBlue Airways Corporation $JBLU of 9.91%.

Rug Pull Season is here!

You guys know me well by now. I'm not exactly one of these fearmongers who spends decades trying to convince people that the next big crash is coming.

There are already plenty of those around.

I'm just trying to make money.

This is a very selfish endeavor for me.

Goal #1: Keep my money. I already have plenty. I want to make sure to hang on to it.

Goal #2: Turn all my money into even more money.

In that order...

There are different ways to accomplish these goals.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new highs in order to...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our February Monthly Strategy Session last week. ASC Premium Members can click here to watch the replay and download the chartbook.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.